Interlude
by Sailor Comet
Summary: Naruto might live a long life, but a century is almost nothing to the demon inside him. NaruSakuSasu.


Dear gods, he doesn't age and he has a healing factor—it's Wolverine from X-men!!

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**Interlude**

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When Naruto was twenty, Sakura and Sasuke moved into his apartment.

There were some problems at first, since Sasuke wasn't used to living with anybody, and because Naruto had been living the life of a bachelor his whole life and wasn't the cleanest of people, and parts of the bathroom were entirely too unsanitary. But the place was made livable relatively quickly, and Naruto and Sasuke found that living with others was so much cozier than living alone.

Sometimes Sakura would come home to find the two asleep on the bed together. Sasuke liked to wake up next to somebody and have to remember that he was living with people who loved him. Naruto just liked to snuggle. Sakura sometimes joined them, moving so lightly that they didn't wake up, or sometimes she would try to cook them dinner. She was surprised to find that she was the only one who didn't really know how to cook, and even more surprised to find both men more than willing to teach her.

It was incredible that they found a balance that worked, because three people was not the healthiest foundation for a long term relationship. They argued—a lot—but Naruto said that it was good, because they knew they could have problems with each other and then fix them. And over the years, they had fewer and fewer arguments until they were down to one a month.

Naruto and Sasuke both worked for Tsunade as Anbu, and Sakura trained a few teams and worked as a Jounin. When she was thirty, however, she turned down training a team, and announced to Naruto and Sasuke that she wanted a baby.

After all the required shock, surprise, and 'who should be the father?' she managed to convince them. Because Naruto could refuse her nothing, and Sasuke was always a hopeless pile of mush around Ino's son and had to admit that he wanted a child too.

There were still a few more arguments than usual during the pregnancy, Naruto complaining that he was the one who always got sent out to get whatever funky food Sakura had a craving for, and Sasuke clamming up almost as bad as he had when they were teenagers, and Sakura—well, Sakura was pregnant, and what she did shouldn't be held against her.

Then she had twins, a girl with her mother's strawberry hair and Sasuke's black eyes, and a blond boy with green eyes who cried all night when his sister was silent. It was obvious that the infants weren't from the same father. It was perfect. The three of them agreed together on names for their children, who kept their mother's family name; their son was Haruno Shin, and their daughter, Haruno Hana.

Sasuke, ever stoic, was the first one to cry when they were born. If one of them cried out in the middle of the night (often Shin), Sasuke was the first up, immediately there to see if a diaper needed to be changed. Sakura loved both her children with all a mother's love, somehow managing in the same way she did with Sasuke and Naruto to not pick a favourite of the two, but give them both all her affection. Naruto liked to hold one in each arm and make stupid faces at them, and never got tired of playing with them when Sakura needed the free time to take a shower or wanted to make a meal instead of having Sasuke and Naruto wait on her.

Once, the fox—Nine Tails—peeked out of Naruto's eyes at them. He let the demon, though cautiously, and Nine Tails shortly retreated back beneath his consciousness with a feeling of warmth that quickly faded with the demon's presence. It was odd, and one of the few secrets Naruto ever kept from his lovers.

They moved out of Naruto's apartment when the children began to crawl, halfway ignoring Naruto's halfhearted complaints, and bought a house. (They spoiled Naruto a little bit after that, because he had lived in that little apartment all his life, after all.)

By the time the children reached grade school, they weren't hated for being siblings from two different fathers who lived in the same house with their mother. Sasuke still carried the respect he'd earned through his life, as well as demanding respect as an Uchiha (the last, since he hadn't passed on his name to Hana and Shin). Sakura was friends with most of the other parents, and Ino was there to kick anybody's ass if they deserved it. And there wasn't any point in denying that Naruto was going to be the next Hokage; he was the best Anbu and had staked his claim on the position since he became a Genin. So none of the other parents looked down on their children, and if they were teased for anything, because children are vicious and none of them escape unscathed, it wasn't for their parents.

Naruto was jealous of their childhood. Whenever he felt that he was getting a little too envious, he would find them both and hug them with all his love, telling them, "You're so lucky, you're so lucky! I hope you're always this lucky!" They squirmed like little children always do when their parents show them affection, but still enjoyed the random bear hugs.

Predictably, both of the children wanted to become ninja like their parents. Usually Naruto was the one to let the children do whatever they want, Sasuke was the disciplinarian who said no to anything fun, and Sakura looked at every situation as it came. This time, though, both Naruto and Sasuke gave a firm "no." The three of them remembered that age; the thought of their children becoming ninja caused anxiety in all of them.

They remembered having dreams, too, and that was all Sakura needed to say to get Naruto and Sasuke to stop worrying and let their children do what they wanted.

Both graduated the academy on their first try ("You're so lucky!") and shortly into her time as a Genin, Hana found that she had indeed inherited her father's Sharingan. It was a nice way to catch up to Shin, who had perfect control of his immense chakra.

Things couldn't get any better.

The children grew older, into adults themselves, and moved out.

Without the responsibility of two minors depending on them, Sasuke and Naruto were free to be active as Anbu again. Sakura had long since quit her career as a ninja, because although she could have continued quite easily, she preferred to stay home with the twins.

It wasn't much more than a year later that Naruto, at age fifty, was made the sixth Hokage. By this point, anybody who would have objected on account of the demon fox was either dead or too old to care. Tsunade was quite glad to be free of the job, and jokingly yelled at Naruto for making her wait until he'd raised a family.

Like Tsunade, Naruto looked far younger than his actual age when he took the post, which helped reinforce an image of a powerful Hokage. Unlike Tsunade, Naruto wasn't making any effort to.

Demons lived long lives. The fox had been easily a millennia old when it had been sealed.

Sakura and Sasuke, on the other hand, were showing sings of their age, Sakura with wrinkles that Naruto and Sasuke insisted were beautiful, and Sasuke with striking streaks of grey in his hair that had once been darker than midnight. The fact that Naruto didn't look a day over thirty, and on better days looked closer to twenty-five, made their relationship increasingly awkward. They started arguing over things with no relevance, the same as they had when they first started living together.

They held out for a few more years, but by age fifty-five Naruto moved out. The gesture was useless, though, since it took less than two months for Sasuke and Sakura to start sleeping in separate beds.

Naruto hated the irony that after he finally achieved his dream, the happiest years of his life seemed to be over.

Time healed their emotions, but Naruto continued to not age, while Sakura and Sasuke did grow older. They only saw each other when talking about business, for funerals, and for holidays when Hana and Shin visited. Eventually the family gatherings included a son-in-law, daughter-in-law (who happened to be Hinata's daughter, which amused Naruto to no end), and grandchildren. It was kind of funny that both the Sharingan and the Byakugan were now being passed down two different sides of the Haruno clan.

Then Sasuke died on a mission. He was seventy-two years old. Naruto did not take any breaks from duty as a Hokage, as he hadn't taken breaks to mourn Iruka and Kakashi, until Sakura finally came to see him. Then he cried, and for a month nobody but Sakura saw the Hokage.

She didn't live much longer after that, and withered like her namesake. Naruto saw to it that she and Sasuke were buried next to each other, and made sure to always be there when Hana and Shin needed help.

He never missed a get-together with their family for the holidays. Those breaks for family gatherings probably were what kept him sane. It was nice to see everybody, even when his children—their children—yelled at him for looking years younger than they did.

When he was ninety and finally starting to get tiny wrinkles around his lips, he passed on the position of Hokage to Shin's daughter. As Hinata's granddaughter, her appearance closely resembled the shy girl who had once had a crush on Naruto. Unlike her grandmother, she was confident, and well able to back any claims she made besides; she was a masterful strategist and amazingly skilled with the Byakugan. She wasn't as powerful as Naruto, and probably wouldn't ever be, but he imagined she could have given Tsunade a run for her money. She was the best ninja Konoha had produced in a while, and the most qualified to be Hokage.

Naruto stuck around for ten years after that, making sure she could run everything. Time was starting to pass differently for him, and he barely noticed his great-grandchildren.

Around Naruto's hundredth birthday, Konohamaru died, and Naruto left the day after the funeral. Nobody but the seventh Hokage had the gall to label him missing-nin. "Grandpa wouldn't want us to turn the laws around like that," she chided, and eventually got everybody else who mattered to admit it was the truth. She and her father and aunt had a private talk about it, and impossibly, whatever they said remained a secret.

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"I'm sorry I made you wait so long," Naruto said to the Nine Tails. "Do you want to talk now?"

"I no longer mind the wait," the fox told him. "You lived a beautiful life, and I was honoured to be allowed to watch."

Naruto smiled.

"I guess all that matters is, is… you won't attack Konoha?"

"I find that I am fond of the village."

"You always avoid direct answers. But whatever. I trust you."

The fox refrained from saying anything.

"Your turn, I guess."

A century had been a long time for the Nine Tails to wait. Now that it was over, however, the fox found that it wasn't regretful of the interlude.

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Somehow, despite the fact that anybody younger than Naruto shouldn't have known a thing about it, a story of a boy who had been the vessel of the Nine Tailed Fox and become the sixth Hokage grew into a legend. He was looked at as a hero of the village, and seeing foxes in the forest was considered good luck.

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(la fin)

(la mort est ce qui donne la valeur à la vie.)


End file.
